Kenan Orhan

I love this book — it’s a book club host’s dream. I was electrified by the conceit… I felt like I was falling through a series of trap doors. I call these ‘Trojan horse books’: zany top level, really deep interior, with a bunch of surprises

New York Times Book Review (MJ Franklin on The Book Club Podcast)

Lyrical, Kafka-esque... The premise is inventive, the symbolism astute, the prose clean and neat and frequently beautiful... Leaving your homeland, we discover, is a series of constant losses

A superb first novel, impressive on every level... At once an urgent allegory about what it is to live in exile, it’s equally a powerful, visceral and heartbreakingly uncompromising portrait of dementia

I mean, I loved this book. The first name that comes to mind for me is Kafka… I did not see [the ending] coming, but after I read it and put the book down, I realized that was the only way it could end

New York Times Book Review (Dave Kim on The Book Club Podcast)

A haunting meditation on memory and displacement that reconsiders the meaning of liberation

Addictive and chilling, yet so sensitive, so beautifully told – like Kafka by way of Pedro Almodóvar – I couldn’t put it down and I didn’t want it to end. Kenan Orhan is a truly gifted writer, drawing us down into a tunnel of memory and madness

Truly original, this debut novel grips from start to finish

A surreal novel of migration and memory [which] follows Orhan’s celebrated 2023 story collection

Surreal, mysterious, engrossing... A domestic drama shaped by the political turbulence of the Erdogan era

Elegant, propulsive and wholly original, The Renovation is a profound meditation on familial duties, memory, displacement and the devastating longing for a home that exists solely in the past. It will stay with me for a long time

The Renovation brilliantly describes what it’s like for “elsewhere” to be “here”. An instant entry not just into the canon of migrant literature but into the literature of now

Isabel Waidner, author of 'Sterling Karat Gold'

Written with a slyly comic touch, The Renovation has at its heart an unexpected and powerfully charged emotional space. There are encounters between Dilara and her ageing, exiled father that will stay with me for a long time to come

Elegant, disarming, evocative... [An] allegory about family, country, and the failure of memory

Impressive. . . Kafkaesque. . . A story about grief, responsibility and familial duty. . . The writing is fluid and propulsive, turning even the most surreal moments into scenes that feel emotionally immediate. . . Exceptional. . . A haunting meditation on caregiving, displacement and the ways in which the private lives of families are shaped by the broader forces of history

Dilara is having her bathroom renovated. Her father's memory has started collapsing, dementia stealing a little more of him each day; her apartment must be adapted so he can move in with her. But when the builders finally unveil their handiwork, there is a problem: instead of a new bathroom, they have built a prison cell. Not just any cell - one that Dilara recognises. It is a room from Silivri Prison in Istanbul. 
 
At first she is outraged, exasperated, determined to reverse the bizarre mistake. Dilara's family are political exiles: they fled Turkey years ago and have never been back. The last thing she wants is a piece of her abandoned homeland appearing uninvited in her new home. But gradually her indignation gives way to curiosity. Even as she struggles to care for her dying father, to stretch their dwindling savings and stop the wheels coming off her marriage, she is drawn back again and again to the mysterious prison cell, which seems to connect, impossibly, to a city that once belonged to her - to the salt wind off the Marmara, the sky full of gulls and domes and minarets - a portal back to Istanbul.

Kenan Orhan

Praise for The Renovation

I love this book — it’s a book club host’s dream. I was electrified by the conceit… I felt like I was falling through a series of trap doors. I call these ‘Trojan horse books’: zany top level, really deep int ...

Lyrical, Kafka-esque... The premise is inventive, the symbolism astute, the prose clean and neat and frequently beautiful... Leaving your homeland, we discover, is a series of constant losses

A superb first novel, impressive on every level... At once an urgent allegory about what it is to live in exile, it’s equally a powerful, visceral and heartbreakingly uncompromising portrait of dementia

I love this book — it’s a book club host’s dream. I was electrified by the conceit… I felt like I was falling through a series of trap doors. I call these ‘Trojan horse books’: zany top level, really deep int ...

Lyrical, Kafka-esque... The premise is inventive, the symbolism astute, the prose clean and neat and frequently beautiful... Leaving your homeland, we discover, is a series of constant losses

A superb first novel, impressive on every level... At once an urgent allegory about what it is to live in exile, it’s equally a powerful, visceral and heartbreakingly uncompromising portrait of dementia

I love this book — it’s a book club host’s dream. I was electrified by the conceit… I felt like I was falling through a series of trap doors. I call these ‘Trojan horse books’: zany top level, really deep int ...

Lyrical, Kafka-esque... The premise is inventive, the symbolism astute, the prose clean and neat and frequently beautiful... Leaving your homeland, we discover, is a series of constant losses

A superb first novel, impressive on every level... At once an urgent allegory about what it is to live in exile, it’s equally a powerful, visceral and heartbreakingly uncompromising portrait of dementia

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